Jessie Pope The Call

Poetry has existed as long as language itself. It is omnipresent throughout every society, and is used in every language ever conceived by a human mind. The poets responsible for the poetry come from all corners of the world and represent all the eras in human history, thus creating an ever growing eclectic range of poetry. While the themes for these poems are as diverse as their type and rhyme scheme, the main purpose of poetry has always been, and will continue to be, to express a viewpoint with the hope of evoking an emotion in the reader. It does not matter what the viewpoint is or what the emotion felt by the reader is, as long as the viewpoint exists with an intention to evoke emotion, it is a poem. Merriam Webster defines poetry as
People have opinions, and, because it is human nature, people want others to agree with their opinions. Poetry is the perfect vehicle to spread these opinions. One such poem is “The Call” by Jessie Pope, and one could almost consider it an understatement to call this poem opinionated. World War I changed the way humans fought each other, changed the way people viewed war, and changed literature forever.

If there is one thing “The Call” by Jessie Pope is known for, it is its extremely jingoistic message. The poem is unabashedly pro-war, and it wants everybody to know it. Throughout her life, Pope wrote for many publications including The Daily Mail, and almost all of her work promoted war and nationalism. As my classmate Holly said, “Jessie Pope was a poet who wrote many poems like ‘The Call’ promoting war.” This simple yet memorable line, describes Pope’s work perfectly. After all, pro-war is probably the only way someone could attempt to describe Pope’s “The Call,” and one could easily believe she meant it to be that way. If Pope’s poem contained frivolous information, her message could be diluted. Pope wanted the
Figurative language is like the arms and legs of a poem (see what I did there). Sure, one could survive, even thrive, without arms and legs, but life is much more difficult. Figurative language allows a poems to POP! (ha ha) and prosper. Your dictionary describes figurative language as “Figurative language is language that uses words or expressions with a meaning that is different from the literal interpretation. When a writer uses literal language, he or she is simply stating the facts as they are. Figurative language, in comparison, uses exaggerations or alterations to make a particular linguistic point.” “The Call” is no different than any other poem, and does contain its fair share of figurative language. Before I analyze the poem, I would like to state figurative language, like poetry, is often ambiguous. Sometime a line is not a concrete example of the figurative language its representing, and some many disagree with the classification of a line. With that out of the way, let us begin. The first thing anyone would notice when reading Jessie Pope’s “The Call” is the repetition of the words “my laddie?” Out of the 24 lines present in this poem, 9 of them end with these words. This is an example of the literary device known as epistrophe, which is a repeating of words at the end of a sentence. The words “my laddie?” are constantly repeated at the end of many sentences, so this a